Stitching It Up
by Artemis1000
Summary: Three times Kylo Ren surprised Poe Dameron (and his friends) with his medical skills. Written for BenPoe Promptathon.
1. The First Time

_Notes:_ Written for the October 2016 BenPoe Prompathon Check out the great art and fic created for it. You can join in any time you like, no sign-up required!

The prompt is: _"Stitches." After a battle, Ben surprises Poe by tending for their wounds. Who would've thought?_

I hope this is what anon was looking for, and that they enjoy. I wasn't sure if they literally wanted stitches, so I included that along with more general medical aid

 _Chapter Summary:_ It's yet another desert world, and they meet as enemies.

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 **The First Time**

"Did you see what they did?" Poe gasped for what had to be the fifth time, and stared at Kylo in open-mouthed outrage. "They shot at me!"

"I saw," Kylo replied in that long-suffering tone he had adopted after the third time. "And you hit your head."

The corpses of the Stormtroopers were scattered around the crash site, back where they had had what Poe melodramatically called their last stand.

Kylo turned around, and scowled at the murky wall of sand darkening the sky in the distance. The Stormtroopers were dead, but it didn't mean that Poe and him were saved. "The sandstorm is getting closer."

"Told you you should've let me walk."

"Right."

He shifted Poe in his arms slightly, getting a better grasp on him again after Poe's squirming had dislodged him, and the pilot's pained whimper told him everything he needed to know about Poe's walking abilities. Even being carried in his arms Poe's wounds were jostled with every step, he was all but screaming his pain into the Force.

Poe balled his hand into a sloppy fist and tried to punch his shoulder. He couldn't even get it up halfway. "I could have walked."

"Of course."

If he argued with Poe, Poe would argue back, and it would exhaust him even more.

They fell back into silence. The storm grew closer.

They reached the mountains just in time, a cave providing them with exactly the shelter Kylo had hoped for when he set out on this trek. There hadn't been enough left of either ship to provide shelter, and sandstorms could last for days on this world. He couldn't keep up a telekinetic forcefield that long.

He gently laid Poe down at the back of the cave, and tried to ignore that his hands came away red. There was unpacking to do, lights to set up before the sandstorm cut them off from what little sunlight filtered this far into the cave; but for a moment he just knelt at Poe's side, and looked down into Poe's wan, sweaty face.

"You're hurt, too." Poe's voice was slurred, but this time he managed to raise his hand enough to weakly grasp Kylo's cowl. "You got…" His face scrunched up, thinking coherently had to be hard when staying conscious took all he had out of him. "Blaster burn." He laughed shakily. "They got you with a blaster."

He couldn't help it, he had to chuckle, too. The irony of it was painful. The blaster wound in his side, near where the bowcaster had once hit him, was just as painful. "They did. This proves you were just too slow, pilot."

Kylo could read a thousand questions in Poe's beautiful brown eyes, but he placed a finger against his lips. Poe's breath hitched, but he ignored that, too. "Later."

He went through the motions with mechanical precision. Empty out the single backpack full of provisions he had been able to salvage, a pitiful loot from two ships. Set up the two emergency lights. Store away the food and water rations.

And last but not least, check the medpack.

He had left this for last since he knew what he would find.

There were two measly bacta patches left. They'd needed everything else to patch themselves up enough to make it to the cave.

"This is going to hurt," he whispered to Poe.

"It's okay." Poe chuckled weakly as he let Ben lift him upright so he could pull down his flight suit. Back at the battle site Poe had still been strong enough to do it himself. "I'm used to being hurt by you, Ben."

Kylo's hands trembled. They didn't halt.

Soon enough he had Poe's flight suit pushed down to his hips, and Poe sank back onto the ground with a sigh of relief. Kylo winced as he realized they had one of these foil blankets, but he'd forgotten to unfold it for Poe. Now he would be getting sand into his shoulder wound.

Blood was leaking out around the edges of the bacta patches on Poe's stomach.

"It's a miracle you didn't hit anything vital."

Poe gave him a weak shadow of his usual cocky grin. "Might have. But the blood's still on the inside, where it belongs."

Kylo looked down at his hands. Where the red had dried it was starting to flake. "You'll be fine. You've just got to hold on."

His hands still shook as he tore off the blood-soaked patches and replaced them with their last ones. "It's a drop in the ocean," he ground out, his voice tight from sheer frustration at his own uselessness, "you need a bacta tank or surgery, not _band aids_. But it's all we have left, and the antibacterial properties of the bacta should at least prevent infection."

Poe smiled again. "Always knew you'd make a cute nurse."

This was too much. It was more than he could bear.

He inhaled shakily. Tried to calm his racing heart. Tried to ignore the pounding in his ears. "Poe…"

When Kylo looked at him, Poe was waiting. He caught and held his gaze. "Why did you save me, Ben?"

Kylo slammed a bloody fist into the ground. "Stop calling me Ben!" The pain felt good, he welcomed it. It ran through him, cleaned him, and it should have reminded him of his purpose. It didn't. The only purpose he could see anymore was the one in front of him.

Poe gave him another crooked little smile. It made something flutter and twist all at once in Kylo's belly. "I can call you whatever you want. Doesn't change the fact you came to kill me, and saved me instead."

He didn't say anything. He couldn't. He just wished Poe were still woozy and complaining about the Stormtroopers.

There were no words to describe the sheer panic that had overcome him in the moment he realized the Stormtroopers weren't there to capture the pilot, but to kill him. He hadn't thought. He had just acted.

"I…" He sucked in a breath. "Let me check your shoulder."

Poe was oddly compliant as Kylo forced him to sit up again, and belatedly realized he should have swapped the bacta patches once he was done with everything else. All this moving around would just make them bleed through sooner. But it was too late now to make a better choice.

It wasn't like this was an uncommon experience to Kylo Ren.

They hadn't wasted one of their precious bacta patches on the deep, but comparatively harmless cut where Poe had ended up with a sharp piece of ship hull jabbed into his shoulder. As a result, the wound was now peppered with the fine sand that covered their shelter.

Kylo washed away the grit with water, and carefully picked out tiny fragments of plasteel with telekinesis. They must have lost the tweezers while tearing apart the pack for bacta, back at the crash site. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he worked. On normal days he used his powers to hurt. He barely remembered how to use them so as to avoid causing pain.

His shoulders slumped when he dropped the last piece into Poe's hand. "That's it. But…" He couldn't help himself. His fingertips fluttered over Poe's good shoulder. He told himself it was only exhaustion which made his self-control falter. "We have no bacta left, but we have needle and thread."

Poe tried to twist around and look at him, and promptly reared back with a hiss of pain. Kylo's hands flew up to steady him. "Are you telling me you know how to do stitches?"

Kylo's lips thinned at the sheer incredulity in Poe's voice. "Are you telling me you don't?"

"Um… I don't?" He couldn't see Poe's face, but he sounded a little bit sheepish. "That's what we have bacta patches for. They tried to teach us in flight school, but I've never been any good with a needle. Dad used to say…"

"…he'd only let you patch up the scarecrows. I remember."

Poe made a broken little noise.

Kylo squeezed his eyes shut and refused to contemplate that it had been a sob.

Poe hissed the first time the needle pierced his skin. He groaned the second time.

"Do you want to hear why I learned to sew?" Kylo asked as he gently tugged on the thread. Once more he set the pointy tip of the needle to flesh.

There was the smallest of nods.

"I was seventeen." In went the needle. Poe flinched, but his pained noise was softer this time. All his attention was on Kylo's story. "This survival expert came to the praxeum and told us she could teach us how to last in the wilderness. She talked about surviving on nothing but the things you could find in a common forest, how to chart our location by the stars at night, and tell which way was north by the moss on trees. How to make a campfire that wouldn't trail smoke. How to fish and that bugs make good protein sources. How to last the night in ice and snow. I think… I think Lu… Skywalker wanted us to be prepared. If we ever had to run."

Silence reigned again, until Poe tentatively offered, "I bet you hated it."

Kylo felt himself relax minutely. "I did. But then she talked about sewing wounds, and I still didn't care, till she joked we would be able to mend our shirts, too." The needle dug in one last time and he pulled, closing the long gash. "That's when I remembered you're terrible with a needle, and one of us would need to mend our clothes."

Poe couldn't hide his sob this time.

"Just let me take care of you now. I know we can't… I know I can't just… I'm not expecting you to…" He leaned forward, forehead against Poe's good shoulder.

Poe reached back and fumbled around till his hand found Kylo's.

Outside their cave, the sandstorm raged.

In here, everything was quiet. They had no need for words.

 **to be continued…**


	2. The Second Time

_Chapter Summary:_ First aid to the trio isn't all that fun.

 _Notes:_ This chapter is more light-hearted than the first one, and we'll be meeting Rey and Finn. I hope you enjoy!

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 **The Second Time**

"Take off your pants."

The Stormtrooper gaped at him as if he had grown a second head, and the scavenger – Finn and Rey, he had to remember to call them Finn and Rey or Poe would be mad – growled and was suddenly between them, puffed up like a protective mother rancor.

"I don't know what game you are playing, but…"

"He needs to take off his pants if I'm going to care for his thigh wound!" Kylo snapped.

"And you think you're qualified _why_?" she snarled.

Poe sauntered over as if they weren't about to come to blows, and placed a hand on their shoulder each. "Because Kylo is good at first aid, and you're not going to make Finn patch himself up, are you? We've got to go and ask if the others need our help."

Rey shot Kylo an utterly venomous look, to which he glared back with equal dislie. "I can't believe you're asking me to leave him alone with Finn when he's hurt!"

"Uh…" Finn spoke up, "Don't I get a say in this?"

Kylo could barely keep from grinning. He could only hope the scavenger was going to get into as much trouble with her boyfriend as he would.

But for now Poe's face got that faux sweet expression that was all wide eyes followed by a pouty lip bite, the secret weapon with which he could make Kylo sit through all-day debates on the virtues of the Jedi Code, but Rey just crossed her arms and turned her glare on Poe. Finn, however, was squirming.

Kylo wisely stifled his growing smirk before Poe could catch sight of it. "If you're so doubtful of my skills, scavenger, why don't you try them first?"

It had been mere goading, he never expected Rey's glare to turn to stubbornness, or for her to unceremoniously take off her shirt.

Kylo sent Poe an affronted glare, mouth already open to protest. He had offered to help Finn because Rey and Poe were needed for a perimeter check, and Poe worried Finn would prioritize everything else over seeing to his injury. The traitor Stormtrooper and him didn't like another – and yes, he knew calling him a traitor was hypocritical when he was one as well, but it never failed to make Rey fume – but he was Poe's best friend. That meant Kylo had to help him stay alive. Poe had been very clear on that.

However, Kylo had never agreed to play field medic to their entire rag tag team.

Poe turned the wide-eyed lip bite on him, and then he upped it another notch. Damn him.

Rey nearly ripped off his hand when he touched her. He was going to murder Poe for this.

"Two ribs are broken," he announced several near-death experiences later, and added with great relish, "that's going to hurt for a while yet. I'm going to bandage you to help with the pain for now, but otherwise you'll have to power through with painkillers till we can get you proper treatment."

Rey nodded grimly. "I know." There was an obvious fight going on in her. "I couldn't afford to take days off from scavenging when I was hurt, I had to work through the pain. I can take it."

Much to Kylo's surprise, Rey didn't protest when he tried to give her a pain shot, there weren't even any pointed questions regarding him poisoning her.

"See?" Poe crowed, and wrapped an arm around Kylo's shoulder. "That wasn't so bad."

Kylo gave him an utterly unimpressed look. "When she thought I was going to touch her breast she tried to break my fingers."

Poe, the traitor, just laughed. "She wouldn't have. Rey knows I like your fingers."

He would have complained, except Poe grasped his fingers and brought them to his lips, kissing them one by one, and then he shot Kylo one of these heated looks of his which went right to his groin. If they weren't both bloody, dirty and in pain, and if Finn weren't still bleeding all over the floor…

Okay, the traitor bleeding all over the floor wouldn't bother _Kylo_ overly much, but Poe… Poe was a good person. And every now and then he got into Kylo's head, and then he wanted to be one as well, but he wasn't going to admit that to Poe. It would turn him insufferably smug.

So he patched up that hole in Finn's leg under Rey's hawk-like gaze. It was uncomfortable for all of them, but better the leg than the back. If the evidence of his prior crime against Finn were bared it would have been even more bizarre.

As his treatment of Finn came to its end, Poe edged ever closer to the door. The grace with which he had that was admirable, considering his state.

Kylo looked straight at his boyfriend. "Poe. Don't think I didn't see you limping."

"Aw come on! It's barely a limp, more like a… hobble?" Poe wilted under Rey and Finn's pointed looks. He raised his hands. "Okay okay! I'm getting it looked at. Just don't rat me out to BB-8. It bet me I can't go a full mission without getting hurt."

While he checked on Poe's swollen ankle, Kylo decided it was something distinctly ironic that he had seen Rey without her shirt and Finn without his pants, while Poe only lost his shoe.

On the bright side, Poe's quips about his ravishing ankles were flawless.

 **to be continued…**

When Poe returned after the first chapter, he basically went, "look, I found a stray puppy, it followed me home."

Rey was Not Happy. She doesn't trust Kylo, and she doesn't want him on base. But it's not even so much that she's scared he's playing them (fooling her Jedi senses) or that he murdered Han, who for one sweet moment gave Rey a taste of having a father. Or that he kidnapped and tortured her. Rey doesn't hold grudges over harms done to her. But he turned on Han, he almost killed Finn. And now he has dug his claws into Poe (again), and she's terrified he's gonna take away another loved one.

And Finn? Finn understands that Rey is terrified. And honestly, both as a friend and a strategist he thinks this is the worst idea Poe ever had. But he is Poe's best friend, and that comes with having his back when nobody else does, and it also feels wrong to deny someone else his second chance when he got one. So he's stuck Voicing His Reasonable Doubts while also supporting Poe's (stupid, doomed, gonna get us all killed) decision to give his heart to do-you-know-you're-dating-Kylo-Ren-no-seriously-man-do-you know.

These poor dears. They need a spa weekend before stress gives them ulcers.


	3. The Third Time

Chapter Summary: They really have A Thing with caves. But why does it have to be on their honeymoon?

Notes: I am so sorry for this unabashed fluff monster. There is no plot. There is no prompt. There is just fluff. I am sorry.

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 **The Third Time**

It was just the two of them again.

Just the two of them, both wounded, Poe more so than him, and Kylo was really coming to hate such situations for all that one had brought Poe back into his life.

"As far as honeymoons go…"

"…it's still the best one ever because you're here with me."

Kylo glowered, but he knew Poe wouldn't mind. Poe called it him playing tough dark sider – which made Kylo glower some more, since he wasn't _playing_ at anything. Poe also called it adorable.

These were the moments when he almost missed the First Order, where his temper was something to be _feared_. Poe Dameron wasn't very good at being scared.

Poe plopped down on a stone and crossed his arms behind his head. "Homey cave. Reminds me of our first date. All that's missing is a sandstorm, and a giant gaping wound in my belly."

The look Kylo shot him was very unimpressed. "Funny." He knelt at Poe's feet and didn't wait for permission to shove up his left trouser leg. If he asked, Poe would just downplay his injury, but the blood was seeping through his pants, there was no denying it.

Poe pouted a bit as Kylo worked on fixing him up as well as he could, not that he could do much when all he had were scraps of cloth torn from his shirt. He did take painstaking care to clean the wound as well as he could with telekinesis alone. They didn't even have water, let alone a first aid kit. "You're awfully cheery for someone who can barely walk after Stormtrooper commandos tried to murder him on his honeymoon."

"I'm married to the man I've loved for twenty years, and now we're together, on our honeymoon. We're both relatively uninjured and safe, and if we try we could pretend that we're on a spelunking adventure instead of hiding from assassins."

Kylo huffed. He knotted off the strip of fabric. "Figures you'd be insufferably optimistic."

Poe shrugged, but the cocky confidence left his face, to be replaced by something far more solemn. "The First Order has stolen enough time from us. I'm not going to let them steal more."

He didn't know what to say to that, so Kylo just looked at the ground and fought against the tightness in his throat.

"Look at me." Poe's voice was incredibly gentle. He usually sounded like this after lovemaking, when all his walls were down and his sheer overwhelming love for Kylo was enough to drown him. But sometimes it would come out of the blue. It never failed to leave Kylo humbled.

When Kylo looked up he was smiling. "I'm happy," Poe said, his voice still so soft and gentle, "because you're here. It doesn't matter that we're sitting in some awful moldy cave that's crawling with bugs and spiders and the surviving commando troopers are probably still hunting for us. You are here, I am here, and that ring on your finger tells all the galaxy that you wouldn't want to be anywhere else." He had kissed Kylo's hands before, but now he made a point of kissing the wedding band. He never broke eye contact. "That's what makes this dumb little cave my favorite place in the galaxy."

"It's not even that moldy," Kylo choked out.

Poe's brilliant smile could have lit up an entire system of caverns.

"It's not. And there's not as many bugs and spiders as could be." Mischief sparked in his warm brown eyes. "If you're good and let me check on your wounds we could continue where we left off, when we were so rudely interrupted."

"I'm just sore. I got thrown around somewhat, and choked, but he didn't catch me with his lightsaber."

Poe looked haunted, and Kylo wished he hadn't brought it up at all. The Knight of Ren Snoke dispatched had toyed with him at first. It had been his undoing. He'd thought Kylo had grown weak, and squeamish. He didn't get the chance to learn better.

"Hmm… Let me be the judge of that, alright?" Poe smiled sweetly as he got to divesting Kylo of his shirt.

His fingers were slightly calloused from many hours spent tinkering on Black One, but they were incredibly gentle as they mapped each bruise and cut on Kylo's upper body.

Poe found the wound on his shoulder where he had gotten nicked by the lightsaber, making Kylo inhale sharply when he touched it. He frowned. "He didn't nick you, huh? That's going to leave a scar. If we have to hide till reinforcement arrives we won't get you bacta in time."

"It'll be a souvenir I can't lose." His wound was almost in the same place as Poe's had been, the one he had sewn up for him. They would have matching scars.

Poe's glower showed he didn't think that half as witty as Kylo did, but just when Kylo thought Poe would complain he continued his exploration – and it was just an exploration now, one which made goosebumps appear on Kylo's skin from the contrast of Poe's hot fingers on his cooling skin.

"I'll need you to," his arms slid around Kylo's waist and gently tugged him from a crouch into kneeling right in front of Poe's stone, "come a little closer." Poe's teeth caught on his bottom lip, and oh, he was devious, he knew exactly how that went right to Kylo's groin. His heart was racing with anticipation by the time Poe's hot breath tickled over his chest.

"But you're…" Poe's lips followed the trail of his hot breath, and silenced him.

"Don't say I'm injured," Poe chided gently. "I hurt my leg. The rest of me is fine."

Kylo's hands slipped under Poe's shirt, he mapped his bruises by his hisses and the tension in his body. Fine was putting it lightly, but they had been lucky.

"I love you."

"You are sweet." It was not the answer Poe had been hoping for, as his pout betrayed, and that made Kylo smile. Poe's pout was adorable. "And you're kind. Joyful." Something pained sparked within him; he knew Poe would read it in his eyes. " _Good_."

Poe shushed him with a frown and his finger over Kylo's lips. "Stop it," he said, "I know where you're going with this." He shifted on his perch, putting some distance between them. With the solemn, determined expression he wore now he looked a lot like Black Leader addressing his squadrons. "But I'm not too good for you." He grasped Kylo's hand and cradled it between his own. Poe was never afraid to touch him despite the blood these hands had shed. "I'm ready to die so people have the freedom to make their own choices. And you're mine."

He smiled that little smile that only made him look more dashing and valiant, that rebel hero smile that Kylo liked to tease him for, though they both knew it made his knees go weak. "It doesn't matter if you go by Ben Solo or Kylo Ren, or what color your lightsaber has. Or even if you run around in a black bathrobe with a bucket on your head."

Kylo's indignant little, "hey!" went ignored except for a twitch of Poe's lips.

"What I'm trying to say is… Don't put me on a pedestal. I'm not too anything for you, and I'm not some prize at the end of the tunnel that you first have to earn." He brought Kylo's hand to his lips and kissed the back of his fingers. They were still stained red from tending his wounded leg. "I shouldn't have waited till we're stuck in some moldy old cave to tell you this, but I did so I'm going to tell you now. You're my husband."

"I know."

Poe grinned. His brown eyes looked incredibly warm and gentle. "Hmm, I'm not sure you do. And I'm planning to remind you of your husbandly duties as soon as I'm done talking sense into you." He leaned forward again, and his arms snaked around Kylo's neck, pulling him close till their lips were barely touching. "You're my husband. That means we walk this path together, alright? We heal another."

Kylo smiled, and in the secrecy of his own mind he marveled how Poe could ever think that being so perfect could convince Kylo to worship him any less. "Together then."

That earned him a brilliant smile. In Kylo's eyes it was enough to light up the entire cave. "Together."

Maybe he could get used to hiding in caves as long as Poe kept looking at him like _he_ was the one making Poe's world brighter.

 **The End**


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